A non governmental organisation, Virginspride Network, recently celebrated adolescents who it claimed had remained sexually virtuous. It said its efforts was a way of encouraging and breeding a new genera­tion of people of high moral character, integrity, substance and purity who could hold their heads high in an increasingly depraved society.
The event, which was the second in the series, took place at the Event Centre, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos. It featured girls between 14-24 years, clad in white gowns to show off their purity.
The president of the organization, Mrs. Nkechi Odebiyi, said that the focus of the group was to pull down walls of immorality thereby restoring the pride of womanhood and nobility. She noted that strengthening family relationship through systematic teaching and counseling, using all available means of communication to enlighten the young ones on the dangers of pre-marital sex, incest, same sex marriage, pornography, exposure and addiction to social network, would make chastity, a family tradition.
She observed that there was a satanic conspiracy against the souls of youths through music, sex, movies, social media and truancy, adding that in spite of many churches and mosques in the country, the gale of disobedience to parents, drug abuse and gay marriages was still forceful.
She said: “What we have today are modernised sins in their various colours and shapes, such that if a child escapes one, he or she would be trapped by another. That i
s why our mandate is to make pure living a family tradition.
“We want to introduce our girls to a new world where purity, career consciousness and honorable lifestyle hold sway. It is all they need to become great and fulfill destinies.
“This will equally expose them to a world of happiness as well as free them from the fear of unwanted pregnancy, Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs), bareness and premature death due to abortion and its related complications,” Odebiyi said.
She revealed that her NGO’s desire was to create a world of trust between parents, their daughter and their future partners, that would be guided by love, fear and obedience to God. She disclosed that her work with teenagers had exposed her to children ages 10-13 that pushed their ages up on the social media in order to interact and attract strangers. Her words: “Even when their parents are sensitive not to buy them phones, their friends in schools teach them how to steal their parents, phones at night, watch and interact with their friends and return same without the knowledge of the unsuspecting parents.
“They are very tactical and negatively smarter than their parents and teachers, and many parents are too busy to start studying the social media. Those who tried to know have limited knowledge and interest thus making it difficult to monitor their children’s level of morality,” she said.
On the objectives of the programme, the Virginspride boss disclosed that Celebration of Purity was an annual event aimed at making girls responsible for their moral activities. “It equally tends towards encouraging the girls to totally sell out their bodies and lives to God, such that He watches over them through the process of growing up.”
She also spoke on how the girls had responded to the programme saying: “We educate them on the programme before the celebration. So, it is their choice to be celebrated and to remain sexually and spiritually pure.
“The beauty of it is that after the celebration and gift of promise ring or anything their parents may choose to give their daughters on the occasion; they also watch over their vows to keep it. Their parents only remind them so that when the pressure comes, they will remember their vows and promise to remain chaste.”
She said that the Network had taken the gospel of “No wedding ring, no sex” to secondary schools through what she tagged “Maiden Club.” She said: “It is where we organise outreaches and seminars. We also have parents’ forum, which is established to educate parents on the 21st century scientific system of parenting.
“Parents need to be tactical in handling their teens otherwise they could be lost to their ignorance and this can lead to regrets by both parents and the girls. We noticed the need for parents to brainstorm and share ideas on how to help their children. This motivated the setting up of Reformers’ Forums for that purpose.
“We believe that it is better for parents to start nurturing their young ones very early. A little girl of four or five years old needs to be taught. The biological clock has changed. The youngest mother today is nine years old while the youngest father is 12 years,” she said.
In her contribution, Dr. Theresa Ekwere, noted that the programme had brought a lot of bonding between the children and their parents. She added that it was well desired as a gift to this generation.
Ekwere who is a medical doctor said: “I think the needed bonding that didn’t exist between parents is what the programme has brought to the fore. We are going to be seeing greater bonding with children and their parents and at the end of the day, we’ll have better families and society.”
On the influence of the internet on teenagers, Ekwere said: “The internet is good but as in any other thing, it is its use that makes it good or bad. It has its own plus because for children today, not using the internet could make them lag behind in their academic and home works.”
She equally pointed out the disadvantages in the use of internet, saying: “It is very porous. It opens children to all kings of dirty sites. The responsibility lies on parents to tell their children what the internet is supposed to be for.
“Every family should have a code of conduct that tells the child what time to visit the internet sites. What most parents do is that the internet should be available when they are available,” she noted.
She tasked parents on the need to keep tab on what their children were viewing on the internet adding that this could be done by bagging into the site the child was viewing to be able to know the kind of stuff they were view. “If you follow through the surveillance, the child would know that ‘If I visit a site that is dirty, my mother and father can see the site and reprimand me,” Dr. Ekwere counseled. One of the teenagers, Miss Femi Ajala Odeoluwa, urged her peers who might think that remaining chaste in today’s information age was outdated, to be themselves and know what was right or wrong no matter whose ox was gored.  She added that the internet could help the growth of young people but there should be a limit to where to start and when to stop.